To say Venom is popular is putting it mildly.
After debuting as a new costume for Spider-Man, the symbiotic alien we'd come to know as Venom
quickly became one of the most beloved members of Spider-Man's extensive gallery of foes.
But here are some things you might have gotten wrong about Venom.
Eddie Brock: the one and only?
Venom made his - or maybe their?
- debut in 1988.
The villain was the synthesis of two characters brought together to form the ultimate Spider-Man
villain.
One half was the alien symbiote that had formerly served as the web-slinger's costume before
Peter Parker realized that his new pants had a mind of their own.
The other was disgraced journalist Eddie Brock, who also nurtured an intense hatred for Spider-Man.
In the years since, Brock has been synonymous with Venom, but if you've been under the impression
that he was the only villain to use that name, you're very mistaken.
While Brock was the original and current Venom, he's far from the only one.
In 2004, when he found religion after seeing The Passion of the Christ - no, really - Brock
auctioned off the symbiote costume to a new host.
It was originally purchased for $100 million by Angelo Fortunato, the teenage son of a
mob boss who wanted to impress his father and become famous enough that girls would
write fan-fiction about him.
Unfortunately for Angelo, his tenure as Venom only lasted a single issue, but the symbiote
stuck around.
Next it bonded to Mac Gargan, the Spider-Foe previously known as the Scorpion, who even
used it to become the fake Spider-Man on Norman Osborn's team of Dark Avengers.
After that, it was confiscated by the government and given to Peter Parker's former high school
bully and decorated war hero, Flash Thompson.
With it, he became a one-man commando unit called Agent Venom.
Eventually, though, it made its way back to Brock permanently… well, for now.
First things first?
Eddie Brock was the original Venom, but before he bonded with the alien symbiote, its first
victim-host was Spider-Man.
He was absolutely, totally the first Marvel Superhero to bond with the black costume,
right?
Well, yes and no.
If you're talking about our real-world timeline, then yes, that's exactly right.
If you want to dive into the actual canon of the Marvel Universe, though, things are
a little more complicated.
It turns out that the first hero to wear the alien costume was…
Deadpool?
It’s pretty weird considering that Deadpool made his first comic book appearance a few
years after the costume debuted, but in 2015's Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars, it was "revealed"
that the he actually tagged along with the rest of the heroes to the Beyonder's live-action
toybox.
During the conflict, he was the first one to try on the Symbiote thinking it was a new
set of clothes, but removed it after realizing it was alive and he couldn't subject it to
the pain of bonding with his own twisted thoughts.
Secret Origins
Speaking of Secret Wars, it's obvious that the black costume that would become Venom
was created just for the event.
After all, every Marvel comic saw huge changes for the characters that had gone off to Battleworld,
and for Spider-Man, it was a new costume that was clearly created for the crossover story...except
that it wasn’t.
Instead, the origins of the black costume come two years before Secret Wars, when a
fan named Randy Schueller wrote Marvel with an idea for a story where Spider-Man would
get a new black costume.
In his idea, the new costume would be a high-tech update created by Mr. Fantastic.
Jim Shooter, editor in chief of Marvel, liked the idea enough to pay Schueller $220 for
it, but the proposed story never happened.
Instead, Marvel kept Schueller's idea on the back burner until they found a place to use
it.
The only difference is that the suit had originally been pitched as being black with a red logo.
And early designs released to promote the crossover, show that the suit was originally
intended to have Schueller's suggested color scheme before it was changed to black and
white for the final version.
A love/hate relationship
One thing that can't be disputed about the Venom symbiote is that it has a deep and all-consuming
hatred for Spider-Man.
What other emotion could lead it to battle him so many times over the years?
Could it be… love?
Let’s just say it’s complicated.
Rather than just wanting to keep feeding on him as a host, the symbiote seemed to have
a sort of affection for Spidey, and even risked its own "life" to rescue Peter after he rejected
the alien costume.
It’s made even more explicit in Amazing Spider-Man #317.
In a battle that went way past subtext, Peter was able to defeat Venom by, no joke, stripping
down to his underwear on the beach and offering up his body to the alien costume while shouting
things like "You want me?
Then take me - I'm yours!"
It worked, too: Rather than sticking with its rebound, the symbiote fell for Spidey's
sym-booty call and knocked itself out trying to sever its connection to its current host.
Who knew Venom was a villain who could be defeated by a "u up?" text?
Best frenemies
Whether motivated by love or hate, Venom is decidedly an enemy for Spider-Man… except
when he's not.
While he was originally introduced as an antagonist for the web-slinger, his overwhelming popularity
with fans led to a slightly different path.
Aside from his original handful of appearances, the majority of Venom's most prominent moments
involved him as a good guy… more or less.
One of the biggest Spider-Man stories of the '90s, Maximum Carnage, saw Spider-Man and
Venom teaming up to stop a bunch of villains led by a genocidal maniac bonded with a second
symbiote named Carnage.
Even more recently, the two characters teamed up again, and this time, it was far from an
uneasy alliance.
Instead, when Norman Osborn bonded with the Carnage symbiote to become the Red Goblin
- and threatened to murder Spider-Man's entire supporting cast - Eddie Brock even went as
far as "loaning" the symbiote costume to Peter Parker in order to give him the edge he needed
to win the fight.
That's a level of trust between them that goes well beyond the simple dynamic of arch-enemies.
I wanna eat your brains!
One of the long-running jokes about Venom is that he eats brains, a fact so ridiculous
that … well, actually, this one's completely true.
Venom really does eat brains.
It's just probably not for the reason you think.
In 1996’s Venom: The Hunger, Eddie Brock found that the regular food he was eating
tasted "like sewage" and decided instead to make good on his threat to snack on a few
crooks’ brains.
He was understandably horrified once he came to his senses, but the whole brain-eating
thing wasn't just a shocking bit of cannibalism.
Instead, it turned out to be a necessary craving for a chemical that existed inside the human
brain.
Fortunately, Eddie was able to control those cravings when he discovered that the same
chemical existed in chocolate.
Here's the best part, though: That's not just goofy comic book science.
The chemical phenethylamine is a 100 percent real neurotransmitter found in both in the
central nervous system and in chocolate.
It's a good reason to keep a Snickers on hand, just in case you run into any evil alien parasites
out there.
"So many snacks, so little time."